Prayer Request

How To Reach Us

Gabriel's Horn, Pastor George Weaver, October, 2018

posted Oct 3, 2018, 11:07 AM by Lois Kerchner

To the Glory of God Alone

Notable musicians have
been known to initial their musical compositions in the margin with the letters
SDG, which represented the Latin words Soli Deo Gloria. An English translation
of these words would be “Glory to God alone.” Johann Sebastian Bach, George
Frederick Handel, and other musical composers used this designation to signify
that their music was produced in order to praise God and for that purpose only.

Today J.S. Bach is
regarded as one of the most brilliant composers ever.While the people of his day recognized Bach
as a great organist, they never considered him as a great composer. When he
died in 1750, his music was thought to be old-fashioned and had been forgotten
by most people. It was not until almost 80 years later that the music of Bach
was rediscovered.

In 1829, the composer
Felix Mendelssohn found a copy of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion (the story of
Jesus' crucifixion and death) and decided to perform it. Those who heard this
performance of Bach's music loved it! They wondered why his musical
compositions had been forgotten. Now that the music world had rediscovered Bach,
they began performing his works at concerts and in churches around the world.
Bach became much more famous a hundred years after his death than he had ever
been while he was alive. But it was never really his desire to become famous. His
desire was to glorify God. Today his music is played and studied around the
world. It is used in nearly every Christian denomination. It's safe to say that
many people now agree that Bach's music truly is Soli Deo Gloria - "to the
glory of God alone!" J.S. Bach recognized that he had been gifted by God
with a special talent for music. He developed that talent with diligent and
rigorous practicing. We all have certain God given talents or abilities that
can be developed and put to use for the glory and praise of our Creator God.

I saw this story in
devotional material from the Billy Graham Evangelical Association. During the
bombing raids over Germany in WWII, a certain church was destroyed to the
extent there appeared to be nothing left but a heap of rubble and broken glass.
In the process of cleaning away the masonry ruins, however, a statue of Christ
was found still standing erect. It remained undamaged in spite of all the
bombing with the exception that both hands were missing. A famous sculptor in
seeing this offered to carve new hands as it came time for rebuilding to begin.

When church officials
met to consider the sculptor's kindly gesture, they decided not to accept the
offer with the following rational. While the broken statue of Christ remained
able to touch human spirits, it had no hands to minister to the needy or feed
the hungry or help the poor – except their hands. They said, “He (Christ)
inspires, but we perform.”

May we as 21st Century
followers of Christ commit our lives in loving service SDG – “To the glory of
God alone.”